Spirit Car: Process

The book, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, is an unusual memoir that blends historical fiction with creative nonfiction to tell the story of my mother’s Dakota family between the 1862 Dakota War in Minnesota and the present day.

The narrative begins with a recreated story during the 1862 war and follows my family through the aftermath of the war, their experience as mixed-bloods, the devastating poverty they survived during the Depression in South Dakota, and their eventual return to Minnesota. My interest in recreating and exploring history through my family’s experience began with a story my mother told me when I was a teenager. I knew that she was enrolled on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota and spent six years in boarding school on the Pine Ridge reservation. She rarely talked about her life and showed little interest in her Lakota identity, choosing instead to raise her children in a white suburb of Minneapolis.

One day my mother said that when she was 14, she went home for a surprise visit to her family in Rapid City. Boarding school students usually stayed at school from September until June without seeing their families. When they arrived at her house they discovered that it was empty; her family had moved. She returned to school, eventually learning that her family had moved to Minneapolis, intending to write to her as soon as they were settled. She stayed at school for two years until they had the money to send for her.

Spirit Car: Process - continued